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Mind your Manners
I tried to pronounce the name of the bar for a fourth time and for a fourth time Mr. Hu’s portly figure shook with laughter. He said it correctly and slowly once more as I strained to hear him over Celine Dion warbling about her on-going heart. The Buddha-esque Mr Hu knew little English and I knew even less mandarin but he found huge comedy value in my tongue-tied attempts at it. Like many of the Chinese people I’d met he laughed loudly and with no self-restraint. It was impossible not to join in.
Mr Hu, an Englishman named Lee, a Swede named Elizabeth and I sat in a small bar in Ya’an City, Sichuan province which sat in humid south-western China. Lee and Elizabeth shared volunteer status with me on Bifengxia nature reserve half way up one of the mountains on the city limits. We’d been driven into the city for a night by Mr. Hu, a paid member of the staff at the reserve. Lee mouthed some of Celine’s song before feigning a look of weariness. The song had been haunting us since we’d arrived in China a month and half ago.
The bar was small and very dark, illuminated only by blue neon lights. It seemed to be a strange crossover between a metropolitan vodka bar and a pub. The bar was white polished stone but the room was furnished with cheap wooden furniture and there were knick-knacks decorating the walls. I watched Mr. Hu walk up to the bar and scratch the ear of a small, grey cat that lay on its side on the bar surface licking one of its forepaws. I pointed the cat out to the two others and Elizabeth told me it was a sign there were no rats in the bar. That little cat was a living health certificate.
Integrating into a new culture reduces you to the state of a clumsy and curious toddler. Everything begs a question as most previous rules get left back at the terminal you flew out from. Something as familiar as going out for a beer can become an education in manners and customs.
As I popped the top off a bottle of beer and took a deep, refreshing swig of the light, fizzy, amber coloured Tsingdao beer I remembered drinking out of the bottle is considered a sign of drunkenness. I took the bottle away from my mouth and shot the barman who was placing highball glasses on the table a bashful smile which was reciprocated. It turns out awkwardness translates fairly well.
After the first bar we moved on to a second which had karaoke. Mr. Hu was determined for an English speaker to sing and Lee reluctantly agreed. The barman told Mr Hu they only had one song in English and as it began Lee, laughing, held his head in his hands.